Student Cluster Teams Learn the Tools of Performance Tuning at SC15

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teams3In this video from SC15, Rich Brueckner from insideHPC talks to contestants in the Student Cluster Competition. Using hardware loaners from various vendors and Allinea performance tools, nine teams went head-to-head to build the fastest HPC cluster.

“The Student Cluster Competition is a real-time, non-stop, 48-hour challenge in which teams of six undergraduates assemble a small cluster at SC15 and race to complete a real-world workload across a series of scientific applications, demonstrate knowledge of system architecture and application performance, and impress HPC industry judges. The students partner with vendors to design and build a cutting-edge cluster from commercially available components, not to exceed a 3120-watt power limit and work with application experts to tune and run the competition codes.”

Student interviews:

  • Camilo Correa, Universidad EAFIT, Columbia
  • Brandon Garling, Arizona State University
  • Alex Ballmer, Illinois Institute of Technology
  • Gregor Matl, Team TUMuch Phun, Germany
  • Trevor Gale, Northeastern University

Based on a combined score for correctly completed workload, benchmark performance, demonstrated understanding of architecture and performance through profiling and analysis, and interviews, the overall competition winner this year was Team Diablo from Tsinghua University in China.

Team TUMuch Phun from Germany won the award for Highest LINPACK Benchmark performance.

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